The life cycle of the bumblebee starts out in the spring when the over wintering female sets out to find a place for a nest. She gathers food and creates a small number of cells in which to lay eggs. The first females that hatch out are sterile, even as the workers in the colonies of hive bees. They act very much like them as well until fall, when they start producing queens and drones. Many of the drones fly off in search of different hives. The queens mate with the drones and then the new queens find a place to over winter and start the cycle anew in the spring.

In tropical areas the nest will not die for years and acts very much like a hive bee colony. Even producing swarms from time to time. Some of the worker bumble bees develop the ability to lay eggs, but they can only lay drone eggs since they have not been fertilized.

For a long time it was thought that the wing surface of the Bumblebee was insufficient to provide enough lift. So it was said it was a mystery that how they could fly. It turns out that the physics of flight works somewhat differently at the scale of insects. Part of the lift comes not just from airfoil lift, like the wings of birds or airplanes use, but also create mini vortexes that add to the lift generated.

Small, eager and brave, Bumblebee acts as messenger and spy. Due to his small size, he dares to go where others can't and won't. He idolizes the bigger Autobots, especially Optimus Prime and Prowl, and strives to be accepted. He is the most energy efficient and has the best vision of all the Autobots. He can go underwater for reconnaissance and salvage missions. Although physically the weakest Autobot, his stealth more than compensates for this inadequacy.

In both the cartoon and the comic book, Bumblebee was the first Autobot to make contact with humans, specifically Spike Witwicky and his father Sparkplug. From that point on he was the ride of choice for these characters and any other humans appearing in the episodes, giving him the second-most airtime in the pre-movie episodes after Optimus Prime. Some years later he was reincarnated as Goldbug, for no noticably good reason.

Here's the deal, according to a post made to the newsgroupsci.aeronautics on October 9, 1996: scientists never discovered that bees can't fly. They have found that applying certain aerodynamic models to bees produces that result. Then they decide that, well, those models don't work for bees -- in other words, bees don't fly like that, they fly some other way.